[Aqualist] PAGES Aus2k call for data

[Bronwyn Christina Dixon]

Dear Australasian palaeo community,

 Over the last few years, many of you have contributed to the PAGES Aus2k
initiative, and have had direct dealings with Joelle Gergis, Jonathan Tyler
and Bronwyn Dixon. This call is an attempt to reach those of you who have
not had previous involvement in this initiative, or who may want to revisit
their contribution in the light of changing guidelines.

The PAGES Aus2k working group would like to extend a request for datasets
for inclusion in an Australasian palaeoclimate database.  Records will be
used to investigate global and regional climate over the past 2000 years in
order to understand climate evolution and variability.  Additionally, the
database will be publicly available to enable future research falling
within the same spatial and temporal frame.

If you have, or know of, any palaeoclimate or palaeo-environmental record
that spans the past 2000 years, we would appreciate being made aware of
those data.  This community effort will ensure maximum coverage of the
Australasian region (including the Indonesia archipelago and New Zealand)
in regional, hemispheric, and global reconstructions.


*PAGES have issued this short list of requirements for data inclusion:*

1. For *non-annually resolved records*, records must cover at least *500
years between 0 and 2014 AD/CE*. For terrestrial *annually resolved records*,
records must cover at least *300 years*. Annually resolved marine records
can be as short as 50 years.

 2. For non-annually resolved records, *at least one chronological
tie-point must constrain the youngest part of the record, with a second
near the oldest part of the record or 0 AD* (whichever is younger). Records
younger than 1000 years must include at least one additional date near the
midway point between the youngest and oldest date.  Raw chronological data
must be provided for all records.

 3. Terrestrial records must have a minimum *50 year average resolution*
per analysis. Marine sediments must have a minimum average resolution of
200 years.

 4. All records must be available in a *peer-reviewed publication* or
described in full (including raw data) in a manuscript submitted before
inclusion in the final database.

 Detailed information about selection criteria can be found here:
http://pages-igbp.org/download/docs/working_groups/2k_network/pages2k-proxy-selection-criteria-Aug2014.pdf

PAGES have also requested that for all records there must be a a *relation
stated between a proxy indicator and one or more climate variables* in a
peer-reviewed publication. However, for the purpose of Aus2k, we would be
keen to know about ANY records that meet the above chronological and
resolution criteria, as they may be relevant to other data syntheses or
approaches.


If you are interested in participating in the global initiative to create
regional and global temperature constructions for the past 2000 years, more
information and volunteering opportunities can be found here:
http://www.pages-igbp.org/download/docs/working_groups/2k_network/2014-sep-PAGES%202k%20Global%20temperature%20database%20announcement.pdf,
while the broader goals of the PAGES 2k project is outlined in a recent EOS
white paper:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014EO400001/abstract

 If you have datasets, or know of publications that may be of interest,
please send them to Bronwyn Dixon at bdixon1 at student.unimelb.edu.au before
30 November. In particular, If you are aware of any temperature sensitive
records that have not yet been included, please consider contacting us
ASAP, as PAGES are currently working on a global temperature reconstruction
and are looking for Australian contributions. We greatly appreciate your
assistance and encourage you to be involved with the latest global effort
to reconstruct the climate of the last 2000 years.

 Kind regards,

 The Aus2k steering committee